Survey Teams

Recruitment, entrance and retention of students to university mathematics studies in different countries

Where have all the future mathematicians gone? Or are they still around?

Abstract: The aim of this Survey Team is to generate discussion and information on what is happening with student enrolments in undergraduate mathematics courses in a range of countries. Are student numbers really falling as seems to be the case in some places? If they are, what can be done about it? If in other places enrolments are increasing, what is happening there for this to be the case? We plan to determine what innovations exist to make mathematics at the tertiary/university level more appealing.

In the process of this survey we will find data about school and university enrolments and graduation rates over significant periods of time. We aim to determine where enrolments are increasing, and where they are declining either in absolute numbers or relative to total student enrolments. We will conduct questionnaires and speak to academics to determine their views.

Results so far suggest that there are a number of countries where enrolment and graduation numbers are declining but there are countries where this is not the case. The People’s Republic of China, for example, is one of the places where capacity is not able to keep up with demand.

Initial responses suggest that where numbers are declining they are not declining uniformly in that country and they are not necessarily falling for the same reasons. A number of academics tell us that students are leaving mathematics because they are finding it hard relative to other subjects. We also hear that students don’t want to put in a great deal of effort into mathematical study when there are ‘no’ jobs after graduation. In one country the job rewards may not be as good as they are in other areas but this may be systemic and a result of factors outside universities’ control. In another country mathematics graduates may have no problem getting jobs, though graduates with only bachelor’s degrees may not all use mathematics in their future careers. Whatever the local situation, there are many web sites that show that there are jobs that mathematicians take and they state the kind of mathematics that is used in these jobs.

In some universities service teaching to students majoring in other disciplines is a principle component of the total teaching load. While these courses may be valuable for income purposes, it does leave those mathematics departments vulnerable should the other disciplines decide to do this teaching themselves. We have a report that suggests how departments may avoid this problem.

Another area that we are investigating is the influence of university teaching on student enrolments. We find that there are places where a more interactive approach to large group teaching has led to doubling of numbers. We also find places that claim that students taking courses using technology increase their engagement in mathematics.

Finally we are concerned with the consequences of falling enrolments. At least one study cites the problem of recruiting secondary mathematics teachers as a direct result of declining undergraduate numbers. We will investigate possible consequences of falling numbers further.

In the final report of this Survey Team we will discuss the above and other factors in greater depth.

Papers and discussion documents

Synopsis of survey (247.00 KB)
Spanish translation (32.00 KB)
En Français (26.00 KB)

Challenges to mathematics education research faced by developing countries

Invitation: Survey Team 2, ICME-11

The 11th International Conference on Mathematics Education (ICME-11) will take place on July 6-13, 2008, in Monterrey, N.L., México. The scientific program for the congress contemplates various types of activities, the main ones being: Plenary Sessions, Survey Teams, Topic Study Group, Discussion Groups and Regular Lectures.

Survey Team 2 is concerned with: Challenges to mathematics education research faced by developing countries. The members of Survey Team 2 are: Li Jun from China, Hikma Smida from Tunisia, Mónica Villarreal from Argentina, Nerida Ellerton from USA, and Marcelo Borba from Brazil, who is the group’s chair.

Mathematics education researchers in developing countries face a variety of issues of priority, opportunities, and problems, such as: the balance between relevance and quality in research; access to financial and human resources to conduct research; methodologies that are appropriate with respect to cultural diversity and societal needs; and environmental, health, and nutrition factors that influence mathematics education.

Survey Team 2 invites YOU to help us identify and explore major challenges to mathematics education research in developing countries, as well as attempts to deal with them. The results will be reported in a regular lecture at ICME-11 and published in the conference Internet page.

It would be extremely helpful for us if you can collaborate by answering a set of questions for us. This should take no more THAN 10 MINUTES. Your answers will permit us to prepare a report about the state of art of mathematics education research in your country. We would like to be able to present reports from a wide range of both developed and developing countries. We therefore invite you to respond regardless of the country in which you work, and would appreciate it if you could send your answers to ellerton@ilstu.edu or to mborba@rc.unesp.br before January 25th, 2008.

We thank you in advance for your cooperation. If you know of a mathematics education researcher who may not have received this message, please forward it on to him or her.

Questionnaire

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ANSWER ONLY THOSE QUESTIONS THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT UPON!

1. Please indicate if you would like to have your name listed as one of the persons who answered the questionnaire or if we should keep your name confidential.

2. Are there specific purposes of mathematics education research in your country (please name your country)? What are these purposes?

3. On what issues does mathematics education research focus in your country (teaching and learning processes, curriculum, thinking processes, cultural factors, psychological factors, etc.)?

4. What kind of funding for research is available in your country?

5. To what extent are the findings of mathematics education research in your country implemented in schools and other settings?

6. What are the challenges of doing mathematics education research in developing countries?

Papers and discussion documents

The papers will soon be available for downloading here.

The impact of research findings in mathematics education on students´ learning of mathematics

Papers and discussion documents

The papers will soon be available for downloading here.

Representations of mathematical concepts, objects and processes in mathematics teaching and learning

Papers and discussion documents

An Invitation to Researchers and Practitioners (30.00 KB)

Mathematics education in multicultural and multilingual environments

Focus areas

The team concentrated on four focus areas of research and practice developments:

A. mathematics teaching and learning of immigrant students

B. multicultural teacher education, with a particular interest in the situation of indigenous teachers faced with a non-indigenous teacher education approach.

C. pedagogical developments for teaching and learning mathematics in multilingual classrooms

D. cultural conflicts, with a view to ethnomathematical developments

Papers and discussion documents

The papers will soon be available for downloading here.

Societal challenges to mathematics education in different countries

Papers and discussion documents

The papers will soon be available for downloading here.

The notion and role of theory in mathematics education research

Schedule for presentation of report in a Regular Lecture

Wdnesday, 10:30 to 11:30

Genaro Salinas Quiroga Auditorium, Building E of the Law School unit.

Keywords

Mathematics education – Theory – Roles – Object – Tool –– Autonomy

Abstract of the Survey Team 7 Report

The rationale for this Survey Team (ST), commanded by the International Program Committee of ICME 11, is that:

“Notions and concepts of theory play key roles in mathematics education research, as they do in any scholarly or scientific discipline. On closer inspection, the notion, concept, and nature of what is termed “theory” in such research are very varied indeed, as are the roles, uses and implications of theories employed in mathematics education research. In other words, the term “theory” does not have one universal meaning in our field. Moreover, concrete theories put to use with regard to mathematics education originate in several different disciplines, many of which are external to mathematics education research itself. The task of this ST is to identify, survey, and analyse different notions and roles of “theory” in mathematics education research, as well the origin, nature, uses, and implications of specific theories pertaining to different types of such research.”

This task defines a very important problematique in mathematics education research but, even if this problematique is clear, its treatment is problematic. Of course, the investigation of this problematique can be different and we can produce different answers.

In this ST, to carry out this task, we will consider three levels corresponding to some questions. The first level is a preliminary interrogation about: how to do a survey? What are the data? What are the tools for doing this survey? What are the criteria? Are these criteria theoretical or empirical? Have we common or different tools for doing this task? What are our assumptions about this task? This level is a methodological level but it is too an epistemological one: our practice and assumptions of mathematics education research found what we do in order to achieve this task.

A second level is a results level. We produce different surveys and we identify and analyse different roles and functions of “theory” in mathematics education research. We must point out different results of these surveys and these results are depending on the data and tools used in this work.

A third level is a reflexive level. We want to compare our different methodologies and assumptions in doing this task. What are the different types of theory? What is a theory in mathematics education research? What is the role of theory in the autonomy and identity of mathematics education as a scientific domain?

These three levels organise our text in three parts and we conclude by some “open questions”. We organized the ST from an preliminary individual work. We got five papers and this common paper is the result of the collective work. Three of us tended to work especially in the first and second level, and the other two in the third level but this is just a trend. Sometimes for further developments we will make reference to these preliminary papers because we cannot include their full content in this paper.

Papers and discussion documents

The papers will soon be available for downloading here.